When comparing pygame vs GameSalad, the Slant community recommends pygame for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?”pygame is ranked 6th while GameSalad is ranked 55th. The most important reason people chose pygame is:

Pygame uses Python as its scripting language. Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to grasp even for beginners.

Pro

Multiple publishing platforms

Pro

Gamepad support

Gamepad support is available as of 0.13.3.

Pro

Free standalone viewer app allows instant, live mobile device testing

The GameSalad Viewer is a free app available for iOS, Android and Kindle. Once installed on your mobile devices, you can deploy and test your GameSalad games live on any mobile device running the Viewer that is on the same local network as your dev computer.

This even allows Windows users to test their games on iOS devices without a Mac device and without any complicated code signing or provisioning profiles.

And, you can even take your games with you -- once loaded onto your mobile device, a history option caches recent games on your device without any connection to the dev computer.

Pro

Allows you to focus on the logic rather than code

Since the user mainly uses menu options there is very little code needed to be keyed in. This makes the code very easy to read and understand.Hence there are many help videos on youtube

Pro

Extensive community of seasoned professionals for support

Extensive community of seasoned professionals in all disciplines (graphics, game design, animation, physics, music, video production, marketing, etc.) producing tutorials, videos, publishing tips, free templates and who are willing to answer forum questions and help newcomers.

Pro

Powerful expression editor and functions

Allows you to create expressions on par with LUA (it's back end-language).

Pro

Custom collision shapes with JSON support

Allows you to import JSON data for custom collision shapes to use with Gamesalad's implementation of Box2d physics.

Pro

Easy to publish

Software prepares your app so you can just send it to Apple. All my games are reviewed with no problems.

Pro

Drag and drop editor

The drag and drop editor makes GameSalad very easy to use, no programming experience needed.

Pro

Great engine

Very quick to learn and great for making games. Community is very open and helpful.

Cons

Con

Very basic

Pretty much just a wrapper for SDL.

Con

Deathly slow

Con

Messy documentation

The docs are messy, and some basic functions are infuriating to work out. There's even some places in the documentation where it's clearly wrong about how a method is called/what the arguments really do.

Con

Pygame is a language, not a game engine

Physics, AI, networking, and input are not supported.

Con

Poor editor performance

Especially when you're working on a big project.

Con

No scripting language or SDK

If a needed behavior is not supplied by GameSalad, there's no way to add it.

Con

Product is suffering - Lacking company leadership and no voice from corporate

Some customers are currently in a holding pattern from the lack of support and messaging from GS corporate. GS is currently unstable and developers are waiting for another update that has been going on from 2015.No word or message from GS corporate about timeframes or deliverables.